Low carb best for diabetics

January 9, 1:00 PMDenver Low Carb ExaminerLinda Duffy

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Can a low carb diet fix diabetes? For some, yes!

When you have a disease that, by definition, consists of the inability to properly regular your body's blood sugar level and/or insulin levels, it makes perfect sense to eat foods that do not cause havoc with blood sugar and insulin. This makes a low carbohydrate diet a great candidate for an eating style, that at the least, will not make your diabetes worse. 

Unfortunately, there has been much resistance to the idea that cutting sugars and starches might be a good idea among all but a few diabetes professionals. Fortunately, individual doctors who have that rare quality know as common sense, have been promoting low carb among their patients with some amazing results. One such doctor is Eric Westman of Duke University. He has conducted his own study and to those of us already on a low carb diet, the results are unsurprisingly fantastic.

"...despite the lack of a "gold-standard" clinical trial proving the benefits of a low-carb approach, he has seen enough in his own patients to know that, at least for some, a very low-carb approach can essentially reverse diabetes, without adversely affecting lipid profiles [1]. In his latest published research, Dr Eric C Westman (Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC) and colleagues report that obese patients with type 2 diabetes randomized to a low-carbohydrate diet rather than a low-glycemic, reduced-calorie diet were more likely to experience improvements in glycemic control and, in some cases, patients were actually able to eliminate their diabetes medications and "reverse" their diabetes, at least as it is defined by hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) level." (full story)

It's great that we can add Dr. Westman's information to that already gathered by doctors like Dr. Richard Bernstein, Dr. Jay Wortman, and Dr. Mary Vernon. How much more evidence needs to be compiled before the mainstream starts to get a clue? Hard to tell, but the resistance is still strong. This quote from Dr. Westman says it all...

" I just don't understand the push-back, because we're not talking about raising or lowering LDL by 20 points, we're talking about fixing diabetes."